


Seam Ripping

by secretsoup



Category: Trolls (2016), Trolls: World Tour
Genre: F/F, Getting Together, Loveless Relationships, confession via baroque pop, graphic description of hugging, songfics are valid when the source material is a jukebox musical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23975161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsoup/pseuds/secretsoup
Summary: Poppy looks forward to her Official Royal Bonding Girl-time Hang Sessions with Barb because they're Important and a Learning Experience and also she does genuinely like her new BFF Barb and being around her! But also WOW sometimes it does funny stuff to her head. It's probably a totally normal part of broadening her horizons, right? Picking the stitches of her preconceived notions of the world is challenging work! It's bound to be a little messy.This is totally fine.
Relationships: Queen Barb/Queen Poppy (Trolls)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 61





	Seam Ripping

**Author's Note:**

> commiting the unforgivable sin of songfic in 2020 because of (checks notes) the movie about ugly anthropomorhpic children's toys that changed the face of the film industry during the global coronoavirus pandemic
> 
> this is fine

Barb reclines, draped over a couch that's seen better days, idly picking out dark and rusted notes on her axe. Her head hangs back over the sunken armrest and her eyes are closed in concentration or disinterest or pursuit of creative enlightenment, and Poppy admires, not for the first time, the intense smoky smear of ash across Barb's lids, like war paint. The tune Barb is experimenting with is uncharacteristic of her, slow and deep, like a lonely, haunted lullaby played from far away, under an old, derelict grave of moss.

Haha, wow! Whaaat?? Where did that come from? Poppy rubs her cheeks vigorously, comically contorting her face squish-squash. She holds the pose until the sting of it grounds her: the low light and rough textures of Barb's home in Volcano Rock City, Debbie in her lap on the floor halfway through a (Barb-approved) makeover, the pink shine and sparkle of her own overnight things, the half-eaten three tier "Bi-Weekly Royal Cultural Exchange Celebration" cake she made herself. (Barb scoffed, outwardly cool and critical, but Poppy makes extremely excellent cakes. Barb never stood a chance.)

Poppy looks forward to her Official Royal Bonding Girl-time Hang Sessions with Barb because they're Important and a Learning Experience and also she does genuinely like her new BFF Barb and being around her! But also WOW sometimes it does funny stuff to her head. It's probably a totally normal part of broadening her horizons, right? Picking the stitches of her preconceived notions of the world is challenging work! It's bound to be a little messy.

This is totally fine.

Poppy breathes deep and lets her hands fall from her face and idly grooms Debbie with her fingers while she focuses on Barb's tune. _Power Ballad_ , she thinks, recognizing the mournful melody plucked in Barb's earth and lightning strings. Rock, but not fast; intense, but in a... different way. A sad way.

Poppy's still not really used to that.

Barb begins to hum, to find the vocal melody in the notes, and Poppy leans forward eager to hear Barb's voice, low and hoarse and earthy and pleasant, but also to hear what the song is about and why hearing it makes her feel this way.

" _So close, no matter how far_ ," she sings, nearly under her breath,  
" _Couldn't be much more from the heart  
_ _Forever trusting who we are  
_ _And nothing else matters_."

Poppy sets Debbie aside and shimmies closer to Barb's sofa. Part of her wants to close her eyes, to focus on the music alone, but a greater part of her is transfixed in the way Barb's arched eyebrows furrow, and in the crease of her sharp, downturned mouth as she sings.

Barb is very pretty, Poppy thinks, the way a blade reflecting the sun is pretty.

(Geez! Again with the weird thoughts! _What is going on?_ )

Poppy hugs her legs and squishes her face into her knees, confused.

" _Never opened myself this way  
_ _Life is ours, we live it our way  
_ _All these words, I don't just say  
_ _And nothing else matters_."

Barb's voice grows strong and sure, confident, and Poppy remembers how close her friend came to world domination through the sheer force of song, once upon a time, and isn't at all surprised she almost did it.

" _Trust I seek and I find in you  
_ _Every day for us something new  
_ _Open mind for a different view  
_ _And nothing else matters._ "

She carries on through a bridge and a few more verses, until the final note of her axe rings silent. After a moment, Barb opens her eyes, fixed on the ceiling. She exhales through her nose; a tired huff.

She doesn't seem happy to have gotten the music out. 

"I don't understand," Poppy says after a moment. "The words seem so nice. But the music makes me feel…." She wrinkles her nose in distaste. " _Sad_." 

She chooses her words carefully so as not to sound judgemental, but she can't help but think that with an upbeat tempo and some key changes, it could be a real banger. As it stands, it plucks discordant strings in her heart and leaves her feeling...unresolved.

"Sometimes," Barb says, after a moment's consideration, "things that should feel good, don't."

Poppy turns this over in her mind. She has a little experience with that, maybe.

"Do you...want to talk about it?" asks Poppy, who is working very hard on her listening skills and senses Barb is wrestling with some Feelings.

"No," says Barb, who is not working especially hard at being open and vulnerable.

"Oh. Okay." Poppy chews at her lip and searches for the words. She casts around for help, inspiration, (her ukelele; the cake; a half finished commemorative Bi-Weekly Royal Cultural Exchange scrapbook project; Debbie, snoozing on her back with her wall-eyes wide open, unblinking) and finds it in Barb's angular profile, all granite-hard edges shaded in smoke and ash.

"Is it like, having something really really good, something you thought you wanted because it seemed like it was perfect, and still feeling unsatisfied?" She waits a beat, and when Barb doesn't immediately respond, she charges on to fill the awkward silence. "Like, by all accounts this should be happily ever after, right, and everything is good and safe and normal? Everything you know tells you this is what people work towards their whole life, so when you finally get there it should feel _right_ but it doesn't and you can't think of any reason why except that there's maybe something wrong with you? But other people's feelings are at stake so you can't afford to be selfish so you spend every day thinking _this is it_ , this is my life now, and I _should_ be happy but I'm _not and why not-!"_

"Woah woah, slow down!" Barb rolls off the sofa and shakes Poppy by the shoulders as she steamrolls towards hysteria. "Geez, man, reel it in. What's gotten into you?"

Poppy laughs, high and manic, and claps her hands over her mouth. "I'm fine!" she squeaks, "Everything is normal! Totally, completely fine!"

Barb fixes Poppy with a Look. It's the kind of look that could and would topple empires. Poppy has never and probably _will_ never know anyone as intense as Barb, and it feels impossible to hide anything from her. Barb sees right through her, past the bubblegum and confetti cake, down to her rottenest, ugliest, muddiest secrets.

Poppy squirms.

"I don't think I love him!!" she blurts through her fingers, still shrill and panicky. "I think I just felt like I was supposed to. Like it was expected. He _is_ my best friend and I love him _that_ way, so I thought it was the same thing, or that it would come in time, but it didn't, and-"

"Calm down!" Barb growls, shaking her again. Poppy's brains rattle in her head like beans in a no-no can.

"I can't! Oh my gosh, I shouldn't have said all that, I can't believe-"

" _Poppy_!" Barb shouts over her, and Poppy quiets. 

She plants her face in her hands and peeks through her fingers. 

Debbie snores on, unphased by the shouting.

"That's, uh, a lot," Barb says, still holding Poppy by the shoulders. 

"I knoooow."

"What are you gonna do about it?"

"Nothing?" Poppy whines. "Suffer?" 

"Wow," Barb says unhelpfully.

"Yeah." Poppy deflates, hands in her lap. All the energy drains out of her, leaving her hollow, but also a little better for it. She sighs, and rolls her head to rest on her shoulder, catching Barb's hand under her ear. "Is that, uh, what you meant, though? About good things feeling bad?

"Yeah, uh. Something like that." Barb lets go of Poppy's shoulders and looks away, pretending to find something very interesting on the wall to her right. Poppy knows there's a greasy EZ Cheez stain on that wall that looks not unlike a chorusfly in a comically oversized boater hat, but honestly in the grand scheme of greasy cheese stains on Barb's walls that one's not even in the top five. "I guess... for me," she says haltingly and after length, "it's more like...having the _right_ feelings for the wrong person."

It comes out in a nearly incomprehensible mumble: _thrmflmsfrthrmble_. 

Poppy's eyes dart up to Barb's, who definitely does not return the favor, but to her credit, does try. Her eyes just slide away from Poppy's and settle somewhere to her left now. Her mouth tightens into a sharp little upside down V and her brows knit into a flat line. The Queen Barb Power Glower. 

Poppy usually thinks it's cute when Barb pretends she's too cool to have feelings. It's something to very gently tease her about until she cedes and chuckles and says _Okay, Popcorn, ya got me_ and it's proof of their growing bond and powerful, queendom-uniting friendship.

Right now, though, it triggers an unfortunate sort of clench in Poppy's stomach.

"Can I," Poppy hazards, remotely aware that her ears are unnaturally warm, "give you a hug?"

Barb hesitates, then reluctantly and with great pain, opens her arms to Poppy. She cringes and turns her face away as if she's bracing for it to hurt, except that Poppy has definitely seen Barb gleefully take a hi-hat cymbal over the head, laugh about it, and ask for another.

Barb is not afraid of pain. 

She's afraid of being vulnerable.

It's a good thing Poppy is a certified expert hugger, then.

She does not pounce. She slots herself neatly between Barb's knees, eases herself into the space provided her, and wraps her arms around her friend. She waits until some of the tension and stiffness eases from Barb's shoulders and back before leaning her full weight into the embrace. One arm over and one under for maximum coverage, Poppy wraps herself around Barb, fits her chin over her shoulder, and squeezes firmly but gently until Barb passes through the three phases of a reluctant huggee: stiff tolerance; careful, cautious acceptance; and finally, welcome reciprocation.

Queen Poppy does not _tent hug_. There will be no awkward pat-pat-release with a handshake in the middle. Poppy hails from the school of full-body, chakra-aligning, breath-synchronizing bear hugs and tolerates absolutely nothing less.

"Oh," Barb says into Poppy's shoulder.

"Mmm," Poppy agrees, smoothing the unruly stripe of Barb's mohawk with her hand. Barb is warm and strong and smells like wood smoke and leather.

"You fight dirty," Barb says, but a little slurred and with no menace. Her hands move from resting politely on Poppys back to fully locked around her waist.

"Mm," Poppy exhales.

Barb sighs.

A moment passes.

This is usually where Poppy pulls away, makes comforting eye contact, and says something like, _There, feel better?_ or _Now that wasn't so bad now was it?_

She doesn't do any of those things.

This might be where Barb clears her throat and signals that this brief display of emotional vulnerability has been pleasant but has reached its end.

She doesn't do that, either.

Barb's hand bunches in the fabric of Poppy's dress.

Poppy presses her face further into Barb's shoulder.

Their hearts drumroll, waiting for the reveal of something life-changing. 

"I think," Poppy says squished-faced against Barb's shoulder, but doesn't immediately finish the thought. It wants to come out of her before she even has the words to express it. 

"I think I," she tries again, and gets no further.

"Are you going to sing," says Barb, hushed and incredulous.

"I don't think I have a choice."

"Oh no."

She swallows and breathes deep. Sulfer and unwashed flannel and thunder; Barb's home. Unfamiliar but somehow encouraging, empowering just the same.

Poppy closes her eyes, and lets the music inside her find the words she needs.

_"This morning, I woke up with this feeling  
_ _I didn't know how to deal with, and so I just decided to myself-"_

"Don't-"

_"I'd hide it to myself and never talk about it  
_ _And did not go and shout it when you walked into the room  
_ _I think I_ -"

_"Stop_ ," Barb says forcefully, pulling away. "I'm warning you."

Poppy sits back back on her heels and pouts. Her fingers tap anxiously on her knee. She's too in her feelings to bury them back again, and now that she's finding the tune for them, there's no stopping it from happening to her or Barb or anyone else. 

She just has to _sing_.

_"Believe me, you really don't have to worry,  
_ _I only wanna make you happy and if you say "hey go away" I will-"_

_"Go away!_ " Barb roars, standing up and clambering onto the sofa at her back. She snatches up her guitar by the neck and brandishes it like a sword, the business end of it leveled to Poppy's nose.

Poppy merely rests her hands on the body of the guitar and lowers it out of her face.

_"But I think better still I'd better stay around and lo-"_

_"SHUT!_ **_UP_ ** _!"_

Barb hurls her axe against the wall where it explodes with an electric, reverberating scream. She's seething, fuming; genuinely, _frighteningly_ angry, not just playing a stage persona or maintaining an image of the hard woman she thinks she's supposed to be for her people; she's _furious_. Hot, angry tears prick at the corner of her eyes, threatening to spill and track her cheap mascara down her face in inky rivulets.

Poppy waits patiently while Barb heaves angry breaths through clenched teeth. When she speaks, her voice wobbles, rusty and broken.

"You just said you weren't gonna do anything about it. That you were just gonna _suffer_."

"I know-"

"I spend my _whole life_ trying to make _one lousy freaking friend_ and now you just want to, what, what, _use me_?" She scoffs, disgusted and hurt. "You can go to-"

"I'll break it off. I have to anyway. I think...I think he knows. I don't think he's happy either." She pauses, reflecting. Branch is a good guy and an _amazing_ friend, but he's not a king. "I _know_ he isn't."

Barb says nothing, but flexes her hands in restless fists as she processes.

_"Do you think I have a case?"_ Poppy sings softly, sweetly, soothingly. Desperately. _"Let me ask you to your face…"_

Poppy waits for Barb to look at her. Raw, strong, lonely Queen Barb, succeeded to the throne too young because she loved her father and her people too much to have it any other way. Isolated and distrustful, brash and reckless. Dangerous. Remorseful. Really, genuinely trying.

Poppy too, is trying. To see things from other angles, to listen, to rip the seams of what she thought she knew to be true and reassemble the pieces to make something more genuine and honest, not only for herself, but for her friends, her people, and everyone she knows and loves.

Poppy settles on one knee.

_"Do you think you love me? I think I love you."_

Barb scrubs at her face with clumsy hands, growling, smearing her makeup further.

_"And nothing else matters,"_ reprises the queen of Rock, as she yanks the Queen of Pop to her feet by the front of her dress to kiss her.

  
  
  


Debbie rolls away in a series of limp, shuffling flaps and creaky chirps to leave them to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Soundtrack liner notes
> 
> Side A:  
> Nothing Else Matters - Metallica  
> 1992  
> Hetfeild/Ulrich
> 
> Side B:  
> I Think I Love You - The Patridge Family  
> 1970  
> Romeo


End file.
